“In the Ninth Ahau, which ye will not understand?”[[234]]
From this designedly obscure chant we perceive that the ancient priests inscribed their predictions in books, which were afterward explained to the people. The expression bin alic u than uoohe—literally, “he will speak the words of the letters”—seems to point to a phonetic writing, but as it may be used in a figurative sense, I shall not lay stress on it.[[235]]
4.—The Existing Codices.
The word Codex ought to be confined, in American archæology, to manuscripts in the original writing of the natives. Some writers have spoken of the “Codex Chimalpopoca,” the “Codex Zumarraga,” and the “Codex Perez,” which are nothing more than manuscripts either in the native or Spanish tongues written with the Latin alphabet.
Of the Maya Codices known, only four have been published, which I will mention in the order of their appearance.
The Dresden Codex.—This is an important Maya manuscript preserved in the Royal Library at Dresden. How or when it came to Europe is not known. It was obtained from some unknown person in Vienna in 1739.
This Codex corresponds in size, appearance, and manner of folding to the descriptions of the Maya books which I have presented above from Spanish sources. It has thirty-nine leaves, thirty-five of which are colored and inscribed on both sides, and four on one side only, so that there are only seventy-four pages of matter. The total length of the sheet is 3.5 meters, and the height of each page is 0.295 meter, the width 0.085 meter.
The first publication of any portion of this Codex was by Alexander von Humboldt, who had five pages of it copied for his work, Vues des Cordillères et Monumens des Peuples Indigenes de l’Amérique, issued at Paris in 1813 (not 1810, as the title-page has it). It was next very carefully copied in full by the Italian artist, Agostino Aglio, for the third volume of Lord Kingsborough’s great work on Mexican Antiquities, the first volume of which appeared in 1831.
From Kingsborough’s work a few pages of the Codex have been from time to time republished in other books, which call for no special mention; and two pages were copied from the original in Wuttke’s Geschichte der Schrift, Leipzig, 1872.
Finally, in 1880, the whole was very admirably chromo-photographed by A. Naumaun’s establishment at Leipzig, to the number of fifty copies, forty of which were placed on sale. It is the first work which was ever published in chromo-photography, and has, therefore, a high scientific as well as antiquarian interest.